A refrigerator is an apparatus that can keep objects such as food and beverage fresh by cooling its freezing compartment or refrigerating compartment to a temperature through repeated freezing or refrigerating cycles. For example, a refrigerator includes a body that defines a storage space and a door that opens and closes the storage space. The storage space may store items such as food, and a user may open the door to store items or to withdraw stored items.
Recently, demand for additional functions of refrigerators in addition to the above-described basic functions are increasing. For example, a door of the refrigerator may include an interface that can display various pieces of information related to a refrigerator such as information about controlling the refrigerator and information about items stored in the refrigerator to allow a user to perform operations for changing the information or for controlling the refrigerator.
In some examples, operations for controlling a refrigerator have been performed through an interface including physical buttons. Recently, some refrigerators include a touch interface. The touch interface may have advantages of having a high response speed and improved aesthetics, compared to the physical buttons.
Touch interfaces may be classified into capacitive touch interfaces driven by sensing static electricity generated at a human body and resistive touch interfaces driven by sensing a pressure applied to a sensor. Among them, resistive touch interfaces may be manufactured at a relatively low price compared with capacitive touch interfaces and have an advantage in case an exterior member of a refrigerator is made of metal.
The above-described resistive touch interface generates input signals at different levels depending on intensities of pressure applied to a touch sensor by a user. However, in some cases, due to low-level voltages of the input signals, it may be difficult to sense a touch operation of the user.
To perform more precise controlling of a refrigerator including a touch interface, it may be necessary to sense each of a push operation in which a user pushes an operation area and a release operation in which the user takes a finger away from the operation area that has been pushed by the user. However, in some related examples, refrigerators having a resistive touch interface may sense only one of a push operation and a release operation. In these cases, a sensing speed and a response speed with respect to a touch operation of a user may be insufficient.